Institute of Media Studies

Keynote Speakers

Keynote #1: Beyond the Participation Paradigm: Media, Immigration and Democratic Integration

Prof. Dr. Peter Dahlgren, Lund University, Sweden

Date: April 6th, 2016 from 09:00-11:00 AM
Location: Room 27, Ground floor Neuphilologikum (Brechtbau), Wilhelmstr. 50

Abstract:

Over the past two decades, research and debate has underscored – and contested – the role of interactive media in facilitating the participation of citizens in the processes of democracy. As countries such as Germany and Sweden have recently faced exceptional numbers of immigrants/asylum seekers, the need to shift focus on media use and the dynamics of democracy has arisen. This presentation will attempt to specify the key communicative spaces, discursive domains, actors and the contingencies involved. A major challenge for our societies is to manage the tension between administrative/functional aspects of integration and the democratic/communicative ones.

About:

Prof. Dr. Peter Dahlgren is Professor Emeritus Media and Communication Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His work focuses on media and democracy, from the horizons of late modern social and cultural theory. This work has been framed by a number of conceptual horizons, including theories of the public sphere and the socio-cultural transitions of late modernity. Among the topics he addresses have been the specific circumstances of young citizens, the evolution of public intellectuals, the use of media in strategies of protest, the changing circumstances of journalism, the significance of cosmopolitanism as an analytic lens for globalized participation, and the subjectivity of civic agency. His most recent book is called “The Political Web. Media, Participation and Alternative Democracy“ (2013) in which he explores contemporary forms of participation such as the Occupy Wall Street movement or online public intellectuals.

Dahlgren’s website

Keynote #2: Transcultural remembering of European border zone: Participatory documentary film as mediated witness

Dr. Karina Horsti, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Date: April 7th, 2016 from 09:00-11:00 AM
Location: Room 27, Ground floor Neuphilologikum (Brechtbau), Wilhelmstr. 50

Abstract:

Although human rights activists estimate that about 20,000 people died at Europe’s borders in the past 20 years, public commemorative performances are scarce. However, participatory culture and media practices afford different kinds of transcultural forms of ‘mnemonic resistance’ against dominant narratives. This presentation examines an Italian online audio-visual archive Archivio delle memorie migranti that documents experiences of contemporary migration in Italy. The archive is an exemplary case of cultural and civic activism that resists cultural amnesia surrounding migrant tragedies. Documentary films and interviews with filmmakers are analysed to examine the ways in which transcultural remembering of those who suffered or lost their lives in European border zones emerges to public sphere through participatory filmmaking.

About:

Dr. Karina Horsti is Academy of Finland Research Fellow (2014-2019) at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä. Previously she has been Senior Lecturer in Cultural Policy in Jyväskylä and postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism, University of Helsinki (2007-2012). Horsti’s research interests focus on qualitative and critical media studies in the contexts of migration, race/ethnicity, and humanitarian action. Her current research examines public remembering of forced migration and migration tragedies in Europe from which she will report in her speech.

Horsti’s website

Keynote #3: Immigrant Protest, Immigrant Rage: Border Disorder and Transnational Cinema

Prof. Dr. Katarzyna Marciniak, Ohio University

Date: April 8th, 2016 from 09:00-11:00 AM
Location: Room 27, Ground floor Neuphilologikum (Brechtbau), Wilhelmstr. 50

Abstract:

According to filmmaker Alex Rivera, we inhabit an era of ‘border disorder,’ witnessing tensions between, on the one hand, the intensification of media technology, mobility, and boundlessness and, on the other, the aggressive militarization of borders. We also witness the explosion of political mobilization by irregular migrants and pro-migrant activists. This presentation engages discourses of immigrant protest in various transnational films. My central concept is the ‘usability’ of the foreigner as a figure whose physical or emotional labor sustains the citizen, even as the foreigner herself is considered disposable. The interrelated ‘usability’ and ‘disposability’ of foreignness are symptomatic of the paradox of foreignness itself, as both xenophobia and xenophilia are mobilized in the service of a nation.

About:

Prof. Dr. Katarzyna Marciniak is Professor at the College of Arts & Sciences at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Her research and teaching focuses on Transnational Feminist Media Studies. Her research interests include Cinema and Media of Exile and Displacement, Visual Culture, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Migration Studies, Discourses of Nationalism and Globalization, Women and Literature, Postsocialist Cultures, and Critical Pedagogy. She also is co-editor of Global Cinema. Her recently edited two books on Immigrant Protest: Politics, Aesthetics, and Everyday Dissent (2014) and Protesting Citizenship: Migrant Activisms (2014) together with Imogen Tyler.

Marciniak’s website